Tuesday, September 11, 2012

I often, like many people, *think* that I have some good ideas about politics. Also I, like many other people, seem to think other people want to hear these ideas.So, as I understand most people could care less, and I have some inner desire to think I'm important and people care about what I think, created this blog.Now, hopefully, I have a place to vent my crazy opinions on our political situation in this country, without submitting my family, friends, and coworkers to the horrible conversation it so inevitably creates.My first topic will be 9-11.

So I noticed a school flag at half mast today, I'm presuming because of the 9-11 anniversary. The first thing I think is "why not December 7 or June 6th", as both were other significant losses of American life, or every significant battle during the Civil War.So, according to Wikipedia 2996 people died with over 6000 injured on that fateful day.Pearl Harbor was very similar, with 2402 killed and 1282 wounded, but most of them were soldiers so some may think they weren't as "tragic".D-Day saw, well, nobody is real sure how many dead, anywhere between 2000 and 6000 probably, which is from about 3% to 10% of overall US troops involved.So is there just a particular age of a tragedy when it stops being observed? To me, half mast flags should be only *extremely* significant events, and never as an "anniversary" to avoid having the flag at half-mast, well, nearly all the time. But back to 9-11. At the time I write this, icasualties.org shows about 4486 total US casualties in Iraq, with another 2114 in Afghanistan (a few of which I personally knew). So basically about 6500 fatalities since 9-11.So as a retaliation against 9-11, our soldiers have suffered 2 dead for every 1 civilian. No one life is ever worth any more or less than any other life. That being stated, how many young Americans are we going to have to lose in countries that never did anything to us, in order to feel like our demand for vengeance has been satisfied? I won't go into detail on the tens of thousands of innocent bystanders hit by drone or bomb attacks, the tens of trillions of dollars we've spent hosting the wars, the hundreds of thousands of ex-soldiers with PTSD, or gate rape, or the patriot act, etc, etc... that have all come about from this single event.